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Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu, [email protected]

THE Zimbabwe Christian Alliance (ZCA) through its local peace committees is conducting dialogue meetings between community members and service providers across the country in order to address pressing service delivery issues that continue to haunt communities.

In an interview after a recent dialogue meeting in Gwanda, ZCA executive director, Reverend Useni Sibanda, said local peace committees were supposed to craft their 2024- 2026 plan.

He said they have conducted meetings in Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North and Midlands Provinces. Reverend Useni said the main challenge faced by communities across all provinces is the availability of water. ZCA has established 46 local peace committees in eight provinces across the country.

“As ZCA we have engaged in the process of facilitating dialogues between the community and service providers so that there can be concrete actions that can be taken to address outstanding issues of service delivery,” he said. “We were in Gwanda where we had a dialogue between residents and councillors. We also had pastors and church organizations. The challenges are peculiar to every district but the cross cutting issue has been the availability of water.

“Communities in both rural and urban areas have cited the challenge in accessing water. There is a need for construction of dams, drilling of boreholes among other strategies to improve water supply. Another issue is of sanitation and toilets. For example in Gwanda some areas rely on communal toilets, which are in a poor state,” he said.

Rev Useni said such issues should be resolved as they were causing conflicts within communities, adding that peace committees will facilitate dialogues to raise concerns in a civilized manner.

This will also provide an opportunity for service providers to be answerable to their clients. Reverend Sibanda said there were also conflicts related to climate change issues.

“Many parts of the country have been affected by drought, which has been induced by climate change. In most cases drought situations lead to conflicts.

“Our local peace committees will be instrumental in ensuring that food distribution exercises are conducted peacefully and fairly,” he said.

“Our strategy is to ensure that the peace committees are visible and significantly contribute towards promoting and ensuring peace. Because of the drought we will people scrambling for the little resources available leading to conflicts,” he said.

Gwanda Local Peace Committee chairperson, Mr Davis Mwera said other issues the committee would want to address under their new two year plan include issues of open defacation caused by open air worship and illegal settlements that are sprouting in the town.

He said there was also a problem of illegal mining activities that are causing damage to infrastructure and threatening humans and livestock. Mr Mwera said refuse collection and disposal of waste have also remained major concerns for residents.

“As we move to craft and roll out our two year plan we hope to record positive results. In the past we have recorded some progress from our interventions,” said Mr Mwera.

“We facilitated establishment of Spitzkop North police base, which has helped to reduce crime in the area. We have also managed to establish peace committees in some problematic areas as a mitigation strategy,” he said.

-@DubeMatutu